{"id":255,"date":"2009-12-15T14:18:02","date_gmt":"2009-12-15T13:18:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lepeuplequimanque.org\/yvonne-rainer.html"},"modified":"2009-12-15T14:18:02","modified_gmt":"2009-12-15T13:18:02","slug":"yvonne-rainer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/en.lepeuplequimanque.org\/en\/2009\/yvonne-rainer\/","title":{"rendered":"Yvonne Rainer \/ entretien r\u00e9alis\u00e9 par le Peuple qui manque"},"content":{"rendered":"

Nous reprenons ici l’entretien que nous avions publi\u00e9 sur le blog elles@centrepompidou<\/a><\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

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N\u00e9e en 1934, San Francisco (Californie, \u00c9tats-Unis), Yvonne Rainer vit \u00e0 Los Angeles (Californie, \u00c9tats-Unis).<\/p>\n

 Aliocha Imhoff & Kantuta Quiros <\/strong>: Yvonne Rainer, nous souhaitions vous interroger \u00e0 propos de la double transformation qu\u2019a connu votre travail pionnier de chor\u00e9graphe au sein de l\u2019avant-garde new yorkaise. Votre travail s\u2019est en effet de plus en plus politis\u00e9, partant d\u2019un travail chor\u00e9graphique tr\u00e8s formaliste, jusqu\u2019\u00e0 une prise de conscience f\u00e9ministe dans les ann\u00e9es 70, pour enfin donner naissance \u00e0 un film comme Privilege en 1990, qui met en sc\u00e8ne l\u2019entrecroisement des relations entre racisme et sexisme. Or, c\u2019est dans le m\u00eame mouvement, que vous vous \u00eates tourn\u00e9e vers le cin\u00e9ma vous distanciant progressivement de la danse.  Comment s\u2019est pass\u00e9 ce passage de la danse aux images, au cin\u00e9ma ? Enfin, comment concevez-vous le lien entre art et politique dans votre travail ?<\/em><\/p>\n

\"yvonne_rainer.jpg\"<\/a> <\/p>\n

Yvonne Rainer<\/strong> :<\/p>\n

In the early 70s when I made the shift from dance to film, the reasons were multiple: an aging body, a disinclination to form a dance company with all that entailed, an interest in experimental film, which I had followed from the late 50\u2019s, and wanting to deal with narrative, with fiction and with the feminist issues that were arising, and my experience as a woman. Film, with all its possibilities for combining image, text,  and voice, seemed to offer more possibilities than dance, or <\/strong>the kind of dance that I did, which was not narrative, but <\/strong>athletic and abstract. Film just seemed a much more open arena for exploration. <\/p>\n

Some years ago someone asked me \u201cwhy do you always concern yourself with exposing the conditions of production of filmmaking and do you see yourself as progressing beyond it?\u201d This is a very political question, and I responded as though someone had thrown down a gauntlet: <\/p>\n

 \u201dThe word \u2018beyond\u201d suggested a failure you have to overcome. The question also implied that one was making films simply for antagonistic or contestational reasons. I was interested in the positive conception of formal playfulness as opposed to the negative connotations of the deconstructive position. There was, of course, a serious justification that had to do with the fluidity of signifiers and disruption of fixed social positions.  If narrative structure was an analogue for social hierarchy \u2014 and there had been much theorizing about this \u2014 then the disruption or messing around with narrative coherence had a positive function in pointing toward possibilities for a more fluid and open organization of social relations.  This was, of course, an ongoing project, not at all subject to aesthetic fashion, not something I attempted or intended to \u201cget beyond,\u201d or \u201ccross over\u201d from, or rise above. By the early 80\u2019s my own relation to narrative had become increasingly complicated.  I saw narrative as an effective \u201cgripping device,\u201d or means of engaging an audience and as such, something that had to be considered and mastered. This meant that situations and characters had to have varying degrees of credibility. It was necessary, however, that the coefficients of time and space be played with – for comic relief, for disruption, for foregrounding \u201cthe apparatus,\u201d for allowing analysis and commentary.  I was echoing Brecht and Godard, perhaps, but with regard to Brecht, I wanted more details of everyday life, and regarding Godard, I wanted more psychological truth.
<\/span><\/p>\n

For awhile I followed and was influenced by the arguments and critiques of feminist writers like Teresa de Lauretis and particularly Laura Mulvey\u2019s famous \u201cVisual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,\u201d which construed mainstream cinema as a vehicle for men to overcome female obstacles to their self-discovery and attainment of manhood.  These writings described the deployment of female figures in the noir and western genres as the creation of enigmas to be deciphered and controlled or threatening landscapes to be traversed and possessed.  And narrative structure, with its development, climax, and d\u00e9noument, was in and of itself implicated.  But subsequently I realized that there are all kinds of narratives, histories of marginalized or \u201cdisappeared\u201d people who have not had a fair shot at being represented, and it seemed obvious that narrative structures can be used for both progressive and oppressive ends.  As a consequence, it became difficult, for me at least, to sustain a political critique of narrativity.  Let me just say that I was interested in creating situations for different kinds of spectator engagement within a given film.  And narrative was only one of these.  <\/p>\n

Another question arises: Why was it so important for me constantly to remind the audience \u2014 via all kinds of strategies \u2014 that these apparitions on the screen are fabrications?  Around 1985 I wrote, \u201c\u2026words are uttered but not possessed by my performers\u2026\u201d  When I first started using more than one performer to play a given character  \u2013  in Film About a Woman Who\u2026<\/span> two women stand in for the \u201cshe\u201d \u2013  it was more an aesthetic or formal, rather than political choice; mixing up the referents simply made things more interesting and lively. Later I would say that detaching meaning from the speaking subject was one way of forcing the spectator to deal with issues in a broader social field rather than being vicariously swept away on a tide of simulated individual experience.  The visual de-centering of the subject has a philosophical and historical parallel in poststructuralist writing, like Barthe\u2019s \u201cDeath of the Author\u201d, Foucault\u2019s \u201cWhat Is an Author?\u201d and Julia Kristeva\u2019s work, which I was reading around 1980.  The romantic notions of unified personhood and stable identity were under attack for the next decade.  Kristeva\u2019s \u201csubject-in-process\u201d was especially appealing to feminists who were struggling to get out from under the tyranny of gender masquerade.  With the advent of post-colonial writing, however, the focus of discussions shifted from gender to race, and there were wonderful films made about African-American experience, particularly those of Charles Burnett and Julie Dash.  The writings of Stuart Hall and Homi Baba have been influential in recasting the debates about identity in terms of cross-cultural hybridity.  <\/p>\n

This is all very superficial and sketchy, but it may provide a framework for following my particular path from formal avant-garde to experimental social narrative.  Here is an afterthought:  From my earliest choreography, I never thought of my chosen medium as a vehicle for \u201cself-expression.\u201d  This was partly John Cage\u2019s influence;  somewhere in my head I hear either him or Merce Cunningham saying \u201cIf you want to express yourself, take up basket-weaving.\u201d  Which in retrospect makes little sense, given Native Am
\nerican traditions and the cultural and social functions of basket weaving.  But at the time I interpreted it to mean that of all the things in the world available to the artist, the self, or its integrity, is only one inconsequential element.  Of course, in terms of Cage\u2019s practice, disposing of self-expression was key to the elimination of personal choice in art-making via aleatory methods of composition, and was even perhaps an indirect influence on subsequent notions of gender mutability. <\/p>\n

I use the past tense in the above paragraphs because I have not made a feature length film since 1996 (MURDER and murder), when I began to drift back in to choreography. If I do re-enter the film arena, I\u2019m not sure what my modus operandi will be. <\/p>\n

Yvonne Rainer<\/p>\n

1990-2008<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Entretien in\u00e9dit r\u00e9alis\u00e9 en juin 2008 par Kantuta Quir\u00f3s & Aliocha Imhoff \/ le peuple qui manque<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Le peuple qui manque<\/em> est une structure ind\u00e9pendante de programmation et de distribution de films, \u0153uvrant principalement entre cin\u00e9ma, art contemporain et th\u00e9orie critique. Cr\u00e9\u00e9e en 2005, elle a con\u00e7u de nombreux \u00e9v\u00e9nements, r\u00e9trospectives, cycles de films, cartes blanches et festivals, dont plusieurs consacr\u00e9s \u00e0 l\u2019art f\u00e9ministe et queer. Le peuple qui manque<\/em> distribue une collection de 200 films et vid\u00e9os d\u2019artistes.  http:\/\/www.lepeuplequimanque.org<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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